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Month: March 2016

What a week! We finally have the house to ourselves as all our housemates have moved out, and we spend the whole time having friends over. Not as relaxing as I had planned, but precious, and at least I had Thursday afternoon and evening free to relax. Have to make the most of that before I start my next college course in April, which will swallow all Thursday’s and a few Saturdays until July.

Made the effort to download (no app for me whilst I keep my old failing phone!) a 2-4-1 coupon for the cinema on Tuesday. Spent the saved money on buying a ticket for a dear friend, but the savings made it was easy to be generous.

Took a sandwich for lunch on Wednesday, when I worked later than my usual hours, instead of giving into impulse to just buy something. It’s getting hard to find shop bought sandwiches which feel like they are worth the money, and they’re never vegan (which I aspire to) anyway.

Went to a friends house party and didn’t bring anything. They didn’t ask for anything, and if it’d been needed we could easily have run out for it, but it turned out fine. I wouldn’t normally go empty handed, but in this case the friend was as non-conformist as us and I knew no ne would be offended. Better taking nothing than introducing junk no one needs.

Mended a work shirt (finally, after it had languished on the mending pile for some time!) and put it back in circulation. Took minutes, I really should have done it sooner!

Taking less showers now my hair is growing out. It doesn’t like getting wet at all, unless it needs shampooing, so as I’m not doing any physical craziness, I don’t mind just showering less frequently. No idea how much water our power shower uses, but I suspect I’m saving a substantial amount!

Phew, what a week! Being away at the weekend made things a little more complicated than necessary, and I managed to take a day off work and then not be able to use it for what I intended to… but it turned out a benefit in disguise, as I just stayed at home, tidied, packed away and generally grounded myself (see this post for a bit of context).

I adhered to my budgeting software religiously this month, logging absolutely everything. I did okay, critically spending less than my income by a good amount. I am actually starting to have savings again. SAVINGS!

Still haven’t replaced my damn dysfunctional phone. That’s a couple of hundred saved. I’m kinda hoping someone I know will upgrade their own and I can just buy an old-but-functional one.

Still taking the bus to work, even though it would be much nicer and half the time to drive. But as I can currently get a student pass, it’s a little cheaper to bus, so I’m sticking with it. It’s also clearly better for the environment, even if sometimes I do wish I could just hop in my car and go home without having to see or speak to any more people!

Signed up to my library’s ebook and audio book download facility. I still have to put books on ‘hold’ and wait for them to become available (this is totally stupid and is entirely artificial, presumably to rinse more money out of the library), but it is completely free (unlike reserving regular books). I haven’t used it too much yet, because the selection is still not great and I am still working through the backlog of unread fiction in the house, but I think it’ll be good for the future. And it saves on physical copy being made, transported, recycled.

Picked up a bunch of vouchers for different things; one from The Co-Operative for £5 (John Lewis) for a survey, four £10 vouchers for Sainsburys by getting some shopping there online, a free ebook from Amazon, £10 app credit (hilarious as my phone is too dysfunctional to really use apps!) and forsee a few more bits and pieces in the future. It’s worth filling out surveys, folk!

For a bonus, my partner is currently finishing reflooring both the toilet and bathroom! I think this counts as frugal because it makes the house much nicer, which should help us get new housemates, and green as the new flooring protects the chipboard floors, which should save them from being replaced and therefore us producing more rubbish and consuming more new things.